Welsh Valley in Winter

David Fraser Jenkins has written of Piper's Welsh landscapes of this period that; 'for more than a generation there had been no significant paintings of the mountains of North Wales before Piper first went there in 1943 ... The series continued from about 1944 into the early 1950s. Piper lived high in the mountains where he stayed for a few weeks at a time, most often during the winter. This was so that a detailed knowledge of the geography guided his looking, similarly as his knowledge of architecture had directed his paintings of buildings. His photographs of Snowdonia dwell on the texture of the rocks and cliff faces, and in the watercolours this is elaborated in the close up views, and it shows how he experienced directly the toughness of the landscape' (see D. Fraser Jenkins, Exhibition catalogue, John Piper, Tate Gallery, London, 1983, p. 107).